Gibson Technology Corporation

Home

Example of an Embedded Twitter Feed -- maintainted by WG

Interesting Social Media observation - Dec 2010

"Students are multitaskers who move through websites rapidly, often missing the item they come to find.
They're enraptured by social media but reserve it for private conversations and thus visit company sites from search engines." -Jakob Nielsen
Useability Guru
Read More

Free webstreaming software from ustream.tv

.. the verdict's out longterm whether we'll all just get bogged down and tune out..
but in the interim
The applications are endless

Social Media - Don't Believe the Hype

Study: Most Brands Still Irrelevant on Twitter

Marketers Are Certainly Tweeting, but Users Are Barely Listening

Advertising Age

More Mobility, Not Less

Defining the pros and cons - and leading practices - of an emerging work style. By Jeff Hocking

"Given the competition for talent, technology's relentless advance, cultural trends, and the increasingly global and decentralized character of organizations, executive mobility is likely to increase rather than decrease.

Companies that embrace executive mobility, albeit carefully and judiciously, will stand a better chance of attracting the best executives among a talent pool that appears interested in spending more time beyond headquarters. " Click to Read Study

Typical Recent Projects:

Set up several Blackberry's and iPhones
Purchased and set up several netbooks
Negotiated better dataplans and voice plans for cellphone/home phone and Internet users
Revamped websites to render clearly on smartphones
Migrated data from old computers to new computers
Fought with leaving registrars to rescue domain names from non-responsive webmasters

Socialization doesn't Scale -

Clive Thompson in Praise of Online Obscurity -Wired Jan 2010

" Once a group reaches a certain size, each participant starts to feel anonymous again, and the person they're following - who once seemed proximal, like a friend - now seems larger than life and remote.."

Social Media Terms and Buzzwords Deciphered....

What is Social Media - A Podcamp Halifax 2009 Presentation

View more documents from David Emmett.

IBM slideshow of interest to CIOs

Highlights: "Insightful Visonaries make innovation real."
"(CIOs) create value by truly understanding what customers want."
"IT is now seen as a key enabler to business goals and mission"

The New Voice Of The CIO 2009 - IBM Study

View more documents from victori98pt.

And the Mobile Internet Space Keeps Growing

"In 2000 the developing countries accounted for around one-quarter of the world's 700m or so mobile phones. By the beginning of 2009 their share had grown to three-quarters of a total which by then had risen to over 4 billion" - Jakob Nielson More: the Economist
More: World Bank 2009

Mobile Internet - Fall 2009

"The Web emphasizes connections, sharing and community, enabling a further advance in the evolution of homo sapiens as a social creature. In this environment, the individuals, tools and organizations best adapted to thrive are those best able to connect. Not the fittest so much as the fit-most.More" - Phil Wainewright

60% of the world population uses mobile (only 23.5% uses internet)

3 billion people use text messaging (only 1.3 billion use email)

405 million people use the mobile web (44 million in the U.S. alone)

source: Kim Dushinski, Author: Mobile Marketing Handbook.

All Major Companies Now Have "Mobile" Websites... DOES YOURS? Associated Press

And.. are you using a device that's smart-enough for you?
Mobile Tech Review Geneva, March 3, 2009: " Six in 10 people globally now have cell phone subscriptions, signaling that mobile phones are the communications tool of choice, particularly in poor countries, according to a UN report published yesterday. By the end of last year there were an estimated 4.1 billion subscriptions, compared with about a billion in 2002. 'There has been a clear shift to mobile cellular telephony,' the agency said, noting developing countries account for about two-thirds of cellphones in use. As well, Internet use more than doubled. An estimated 23% of people used the Internet last year, up from 11% in 2002."
~The Associated Press (Ottawa Sun March 3, 2009) More info at: CTIA Web

we LOVE the Internet

Very cool video on 'where the Internet's going ...

Typical Recent Projects: Summer 2009

Resurrecteda couple of websites and updated content after initial webmaster(s) went AWOL
Converted a ColdFusionTM website to a WordpressTM website
saved a meduim sized firm $10,000 annually on their corporate phoneplans/DSL Internet Line/Website hosting/Mobile phones and Data plans
created Social Media Presence for Medical Office
set up Remote Training System for a personal trainer including Skype, a YouTube Channel and a new website
Trained several executives to make better use of their mobile devices including Tasks, Calendar events and accessing information more quickly on internal systems

June 2009: Online Video 'how to' modules...make so much sense

Cellular & Mobile Phones:
How To Connect Your Mobile Phone To Other Mobile Devices

BONUS: videojug.com : how to connect laptop to TV

May 2009: Mobile / Wireless Wave Continues

...And this news should convince you that your business website should be mobile browser accessible....
Quoted from: Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association
"New polling conducted by Ipsos-Reid on behalf of Rogers Wireless shows that 26% of wirelessly connected Canadians aged 18-34 are accessing the Web from their mobile devices everyday, and of that, 65% are browsing from their mobiles multiple times a day.
Half of the one-quarter of wirelessly connected Canadians accessing the mobile Web are accessing social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter directly from their mobile devices. Full survey information is available at:
http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/"

Typical Recent Projects: April 2009

Set up Blackberries, iPhones, Treos and other Smartphones

Set-up several Skype and Messenger accounts with webcams

Set up shared calendars for workgroup using Google Calendars

Improved Google Rankings for existing websites

Built websites specifically for mobile platforms

Wrote Internet Security Policy for small office

Wrote a 'change list' for submission to current webmaster

Haggled with phone and Internet providers for better services

Trained people to use cameras and send photo attachments

Trained people to use Craigslist and Kijiji to post and sell items

March 2009: Describing the "Hype Curve"

Senior VP and CTO: Intel Corporation: Patrick P.Felsinger (2005)

"RFID is going through the Hype Curve, where at first people claim it is going to transform the world overnight. Then, when people try to implement it, they come back, painfully disappointed. Then, over time, it reaches a maturity and acceptance level that will be dramatic and significant beyond even the expectations of the initial hype, but often in places and ways that weren't quite envisioned or considered initially. Finally, there is just this maturuity-of-adoption cycle that is going to have a huge impact."

From: "RFID and Beyond: Growing Your Business Through Real World Awareness" written by: Claus Heinrich

"This Hype Curve also applies to the adaptation and integration of cell-phones, smart-phones and other 'mobility oriented gagetry'. According to Associated Press, the number of cellphone users in the world has gone up from 1 billion in 2002 to 4 billion in 2008. Is your business ready for the implications?" - W. Gibson, Gibson Technology Corporation

Excellent Article:
Jakob Nielsen Discusses Website Useability on Mobile Devices: Feb 2009 -

Feb 2009: Why New Technology Projects Fail*

"Part of the problem is the high level of excitement... Everyone involved in the implementation, especially engineers, becomes excited about its potential, they "fall in love," and many of these events start to happen:

The scope spins out of control because everybody wants to use the new technology to solve problems.
Every project attempts to become related somehow to the new technology, to take advantage of budget allocations and employee enthusiasm.
Business Goals are forgotten or glossed over, and the technology takes center stage.
Strategy becomes defined by the technology.
Real experience is scare, yet many vendors jump on the bandwagon and claim competence.
Technology is implemented in a quick-and-dirty fashion, without proper consideration of a long-term architecture.
Software development projects are rushed into production without proper quality assurance.
Because projects become highly visible, the cost of failure is high, which leads people to hope for a miracle, even in the face of serious problems.
The difficulty of changing an organization is underestimated and not adequately planned for.

All these pressures can add up to an assortment of failures." *From page 155 and 156: "RFID and Beyond: Growing Your Business Through Real World Awareness" written by: Claus Heinrich

Feb: Grassroots Social Networking in Action

When Gondoliers in Venice are posting videos to Youtube in support of Obama, you know this 'social networking thing' is catching on...

Excellent Article:
Some of the Perils of Social Networking for Corporations

Jan 2009 Update

Amazingly Powerful Google Service: Google Books

It's not that complicated, it allows you to search the full text of the book but if the book is still in copyright then you only get a limited view. If it's out of copyright you can probably download the whole book, and of course the video mentions the right hand navigation that lets you buy the book or check it out from a library and because of that it can actually help sell more books without infringing on the copyright itself. sebastianlewis more

see blog for previous entries

December 2008

Unified Communications

Telecom Monthly - future of communications
Unified Communications is simply the convergence of multiple applications; smushing products together to increase usability and functionality: like combining graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows to make much more compact, less gooey, and more delicious s�mores. The communications example is sending voice mail to your email box, integrating instant messages into other applications, tying your address book into all of your office systems, and make it a snap for you to contact anyone, at any time, from nearly any application. UC is just integration, it is also just part of our natural evolution as an industry. Products that do more with less overhead and expense have always been popular choices. Written by Todd � more

November 2008

The Future according to Gartner Inc., ...

see blog for previous entries

Gartner's top 10 disruptive technologies 2008-2012:
* Multicore and hybrid processors
* Virtualisation and fabric computing
* Social networks and social software
* Cloud computing and cloud/Web platforms
* Web mashups
* User Interface
* Ubiquitous computing
* Contextual computing
* Augmented reality
* Semantics
more

October 2008

AND THE WIRELESS WAVE CONTINUES...

Estimated Current US Wireless Subscribers : 265,551,297 Sept 2008: Source: CTIA.org
79% Of all US Teens have mobile devices ... READ ARTICLE Listen to Podcast (HarrisInteractive)
...what could this mean for your business?

September 2008

WEBSITES FOR SMARTPHONES

Try surfing your company website from a smartphone. You might be surprised at how unuseable and/or unreadable your site is on a 2.5" screen.
This should concern you when you consider that many people are browsing and making business decisions while surfing on their cellphones...
Small Business Owners: Watch this! - Google Guru talking about Website design, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Key words, Mobile browsers other innovations, etc

Link to article - 7 usability guidelines for websites on mobile devices

August 2008 Update

AT THE COTTAGE

If you are a Bell Sympatico or Rogers home Internet user, chances are you qualify for some free 'dial-up' Internet hours when you visit your friends or go to the cottage (consider all the remote places that don't have highspeed!) Try setting up the dial-up connection on your laptop before you go to the cottage and bring an extra 'phone splitter' and phone cable so you can leave the phone and the laptop connected at the same time.

July 2008 Update

PHONE PLANS

If you have a home phone and a cell phone, now is the time to call your service provider and haggle for better rates!

There are so many packages available which allow you to combine services and save money on long distance and daytime usage that if you haven't haggled with them for over a year, I'm SURE you're paying more than you need to!
If you don't relish making that call....let me see your bills and I'll come over and personally haggle for you.
Enjoy your summer, Wanda.

June 2008 Update

Backups!!!

I can't stress the importance of doing backups regularly and setting a 'restore point' for your system as well.
Memory Sticks and "Flash Memory Cards" are so inexpensive and fast now, there really is no excuse.

May 2008 Update

Filing and Folders

The most organized home offices I've seen have excellent paper filing systems. For instance, Insurance and Investment folders are separated from Hydro and Cable invoices in a filing cabinet.
These same organizational skills can be applied to managing information on your computer.
The methodical use of folders, sub-folders and appropriately named files can greatly reduce the stress and improve the overall computing experience. From photos to newsletters, from emails to e-filed income tax documents; each file needs a name and each file needs a place to 'park' within a folder for easy access...sounds simple....but....

April 2008 Update

Managing Subscriptions and Spam

More and more websites and companies are asking for personal information during their online subscription/registration process. For this reason, many people use 'throw-away' email addresses (yahoo, hotmail, etc) when filling in such forms so that their main email address isn't the target of unsolicited spam.

If you don't already have a 'throw-away'email address, consider creating one today!

March 2008 Update

Internet Research

Many more people are using the Internet to research their hobbies, determine the availability of rare collectibles and find distant relations than ever before.

However, just as there are a million ways to use the Internet for research, there are just as many ways to get off track. I encourage you to approach an Internet search with clear objectives and avoid the temptation to follow every lead...afterall, your time is precious and the Internet is limitless!!!

February 2008 Update

Portable Computing

Whether you use text messaging on your cellphone, carry a Blackberry, or simply check your email on somebody else's computer, you are starting to see the benefits of portable computing...and the future will bring many more ways to keep organized and save time.

I'm currently testing a billing program on my Palm Pilot that creates timesheets and invoices I can email to my clients immediately after an appointment, an amazing time saver for someone who hates bookkeeping!!

Be sure and ask me about the other neat things I'm testing the next time you see me.

January 2008 Update

Online Ordering with Local Delivery!

Considering the price of gas and increasing traffic, ordering online locally and having packages delivered is becoming more popular.
Business Depot offers free delivery on orders over $50.00 and book stores, florists and drycleaners offer pick up and delivery services too.
The next time you are at your favorite store, find out if they offer online ordering or delivery or a combination of the two!
An Example: I bought two bookshelves at Business Depot (in person) and then asked to have them shipped to me no charge. They arrived in 48 hrs and I didn't have to lug them out of the store.

December 2007 Update

Personal Documents: What is Everyone Else Doing?

This is the time of year for lists and resolutions! Many clients are using spreadsheets to keep track of assets, manage lists and create budgets.
Others are copying interesting articles from the Internet, removing all the advertising, and then setting up the page with double spaced type and larger fonts for easier reading.
Still others are printing photo albums (and even Christmas cards) to share with family over the holidays.

November 2007 Update

Backups

The past few weeks have been filled with horror stories of sporadic lost of functionality and glitchy data synchronization between PDA's, desktop machines and network servers.

I wish software was foolproof but the secret to all successful data migrations and software installations is: DO YOUR BACKUPS BEFOREHAND!!!

Sometimes uninstalling software and restoring a system to its last known 'good setting' is the fastest way to start fixing a problem (or abandoning a problem!!) so do yourself a favor and start doing regular backups.

Typical Recent Projects: Fall 2007

- Set up new computer and restored data from old computer
- Created graphics for signature files
- Set up an unlimited long distance Skype account
- Set up a Palm Treo with Voice Dial capabilities
- Taught someone how to buy products online using their aeroplan points
- Created an easy-to-use data tracking form for a sales team

October 2007 Update

Laptops, wireless networks and high speed Internet

Many of my clients are now working from home and trying to share printers and Internet connections on two different networks. Add to the mix the kids with their laptops, webcams and iPods, and connectivity can get pretty chaotic.

As I sort through network problems, I'm always surprised at how many times I hear 'something weird' just 'happened' (according to the parents), only to find out that unauthorized software or devices have been added to a network thereby disrupting the network connections and possibly corrupting drivers.

I'm beginning to think that networking printers at home is more aggravation than it is worth and, once the problem starts, you might as well just go and get an $80.00 printer and save yourself tons of hassle!!

September 2007

Old Ottawa South Art and Music Festival

Festival Site

Being called in at the last minute to revamp a web site is something I have done several times. This particular project required the immediate creation of an 'easy to update' website incorporating the existing logos and two years of archival material along with the current exhibitors and sponsors.
Once the basics were in place, I created two cool slideshows using freely available software.
This whole project shows you don't have to spend tons of money to get neat results.
Top

- Wrote shopping list for new office
- Freshened up some existing websites
- Loaded photos and music onto an iPod
- Resolved an Anti-Virus software problem
- Proved a child was gambling online
- Backed up files onto a USB memory stick

Another Artistic Promotion

New to Ottawa, this guitar playing artist needed a special event to help promote his work and build his 'name recognition' in the Ottawa area. Eric's website
We gathered email addresses from visitors to his Glebe Art in the Park booth and then invited all these people to an open mike/art exhibition at the Georgetown Pub a few weeks later. I created posters for the event and invited media via email. The event was covered as part of the A-Channel TV news and was mentioned in the Ottawa Citizen as well.
All in all, a successful promotion.